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Fri, December 28, 2012

Shovel shopping

I went shovel shopping, not something you do every year.
Today on the PhilCast I'll cover all the things to be considered when buying a new snow shovel, right down to feeling the need to take it for a 'test drive' in the store.

Have you shovel shopped lately?
It's not easy.

There are a lot of choices at a lot of different price points. I saw a shovel that cost $60.00!
You can probably guess that that's not the one I ended up buying.

I made my choice based on the combination of price and features, of which, I feel my new shovel has at least four features I liked:

1. Long handle.
I noticed some of them had handles so short they must have been made by back doctors so that you hurt your back and have to go see them to fix it.

2. Angle on the handle loop
I liked this feature. The loop at the end of the handle for your hand (oh, some shovels don't even have a loop...they just have a stick handle that ends up there) has an angle to it, which fits the way you hold the thing to throw the snow.

3. Rubber grip thingy
About midway down the handle there is a foam-rubber-type section of material to grab on to. Nice.

4. Heavy metal shovel head strip
This is important. Many of the plastic shovels had no such strip along the edge. Come on, how long is that going to last? In a battle of snow and ice versus plastic, well, plastic alone ain't gonna cut it. This one has an entire metal plate bolted on down there.

And speaking of bolted....
I guess I could go #5 here...the handle is fixed to the head with THREE bolts, not one, like the one that just broke on me after only a couple of seasons of use.

So I have a new shovel in place and ready to go. I'll have to write a review after actually using it for the first time.

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